4th of July from Across the Northern Border

I’ve always loved the 4th of July and its rituals and traditions: Bar-B-Ques, fireworks, parades.

As a young kid, we’d go down to the high school and see friends from school we hadn’t seen in what felt like forever but was, in fact, only about three weeks since school let out and the end-of-year town fair pulled out of town. Then we’d sit on blankets on the dewy lawn of the school and watch the bursts of colors explode above us on a darkening canvas of the sky.

As an adult, I would go to little town parades with their quirky homemade floats and military veterans and high school bands in towns like Wellfleet, Mass, Warren, Vermont or Vail, Colorado. Then, at night, I’d watch those colorful patterns explode over the waters of Lake Champlain or over the National Mall or the Charles River on TV.

This day offers a welcome respite. A long weekend, sometimes stretching to four days, in the heart of summer with a bunch of it behind us and a good stretch still to go. But it also represents so much more.

In 1776 Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense: “Where…is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend…so far as we approve of monarchy…in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.

A government of our own is our natural right: And when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced, that it is infinitely wiser and safer, to form a constitution of our own in a cool deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance. If we omit it now, some Massanello (dictator of the time *) may hereafter arise, who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and the discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge.

“We have it in our power,” Paine wrote, “to begin the world over again.”

This year, like the last few, we celebrate America’s birthday from outside of its borders. This year, we found ourselves on this side of the Atlantic in quaint little St Andrews by the Sea in New Brunswick Canada just over the border from Maine. We spent our days wandering around its small, quiet streets, encountering deer who were unafraid of their human neighbors, through the little town shops and galleries and visiting its fantastic gourmet restaurants. And in the evenings, we could see fireworks over the treetops in Maine towns not that far off.

Happy birthday America. To many more. Let freedom ring.

(*) Massanello was an Italian fisherman who led an uprising and insurrection against the Spanish ruling class in Naples in July of 1647. The revolt led to executions and, to quell the unrest, Massanello was quickly installed as the “captain-general” of the people of Naples. This, in effect, gave him supreme power, that of a king. He went crazy with his power and was eventually executed. Source.